HHS HealthBeat (July 6, 2010)

Older folks’ financial thinking

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

A researcher who looked at the ability to make financial decisions says how well people think is more important than how old they are.

Scott Huettel of Duke University compared 66- to-76-year-olds with 18- to-35-year-olds. They all had to make risky decisions involving money, and they all got tests of such things as the speed at which they processed information and what they remembered.

Huettel says people with better thinking skills made better financial decisions:

[Scott Huettel speaks] "Older adults, on average, tended to make worse decisions than younger adults. But the older adults varied considerably. Some of them made very poor financial decisions, and other people made decisions that looked indistinguishable from those of younger adults."

The study in the journal Psychology and Aging was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

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HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011